Reddit
written by sarah perez Reddit Reddit is a news, entertainment, and social networking website created by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in Medford, Massachusetts on June 2005. It is currently the ranked the 33rd most frequently visited website. Users are referred to as “Redditors.” Overview While registration is not required to use the site, users can chose to create a free account in order to publish and/or vote on the site’s content. Users are free to publish content ranging from links to articles, text posts, or other media. Users like you provide most, if not all, of the content featured on the site as well as decide, through voting, what's gets featured on the website’s front page. This is the site’s way of having user customization, as users themselves can filter out unwanted material and determine what’s popular/trending. Upvoting and downvoting links and comments also make up a user’s “link and comment karma,” a point like system used by the site in order to incentivize its members to constantly contribute to the site’s “freshness.” The more upvotes a user has, the more karma they have. The website is organized into categories, or sub-communities, called “subreddits” made within the Reddit community. These subreddits are created to filter specific information and make it it easier to search for, as one can just look a certain category for any specific information. These subreddits are typically used to discuss certain specific topics or analyze any one specific content, whether it be a video, text post, question, or photos put up by other members. Community and Culture Reddit is known for its diverse user community that generate its content. It has created in itself a special type of community composing of its members, as well as subcommunities within the entire redditor community. Reddit has essentially created it’s own culture. Such communities are special in that they have created a type of society with its own rules, referred to as reddiquette, and even own type of language (slang). Its user demographics make it possible to account for the wide-range of page categories, or subreddits, as well as the ability for smaller subreddits. "There are a lot of things we want to do that we just haven't been able to yet. Being able to give people the ability to really create the communities that want...The people should be making decidions and deciding what is appropriate for the audience, not us." - Erik Martin, general manager of Reddit (2014) Reddit Slang Because of the site’s heavy traffic, much of it’s original slang can now be found on other various sites, such as twitter, tumblr, other social media, and even into more everyday things like text messaging. Listed below are some of the more popular abbreviations/slang terms commonly found in subreddit feeds: * AMA – abbrev. ask me anything * Cake Day – users anniversary of the day they joined Reddit * CCW – abbrev. comments and criticism welcome * Downvote – to dislike a post or comment * FWP – abbrev. First World Problems meme * GGG – abbrev. used to refer to either Good Guy Greg or Good Girl Gina meme * HIFW – abbrev. how I feel when * HMB – abbrev. hold my beer * IRL – abbrev. in real life * Lurker – a person who frequently visits Reddit but does not contribute by posting links or comments. * MFW – abbrev. my face when * Mods – moderators of subreddits who control the content and submissions from Reddit users * NSFW – abbrev. not safe for work (graphic images/gifs, often pornographic) * OP – abbrev. original poster * SO – abbrev. Significant Other * TL;DR – abbrev. too long; didn’t read Popular Pages * APA (ask me anything): typical for question and answer feeds * TIL (today I learned) * AskReddit Further Reading & Resources ''“Don’t feed the troll”: Shutting down debate about community expectations on Reddit.com, Kelly Bergstrom - ''Gives overview as well as discusses codes of conduct and "unwritten rules" of online communities, using Reddit as a case study. (x) Widespread underprovision on Reddit, Eric Gilbert - ''Paper discusses the impact that members of social media have in voting and wether social voting has an impact on the overall sites, as some pages/links might be completely ignored. 'Human Psychology of Common Appraisal: The Reddit Score, Van Meighem - 'Paper discusses the impact "Reddit score," or Reddit karma, might have on a person on a socio-psychological level. 'Researching Social News – Is reddit.com a mouthpiece for the ‘Hive Mind’, or a Collective Intelligence approach to Information Overload?, Richard Mills - 'Paper discusses the impact of high visibility, frequently-visited pages on websites such as Reddit in respect to the user-voting system. 'Pop Polyvocality: Internet Memes, Public Participation, and the Occupy Wall Street Movement - 'Discusses the impact of social media and social political involvement, such as the involvement of Reddit and Tumblr users in the occupy wall street movement. The paper also discusses the new model of political involvement that has been created on sites like these, such as using memes and vines in order to facilitate political discussion. 'Creating a More Curious Generation through Memes: Q&A with Reddit GM - Memeburn - 'Expansion of reddit as a company as well as information on how reddit hs seemed to have influenced a whole generation using memes. (x) 'Rae, Haniya. "Cheatsheet: How Brands Can Win Reddit." Digiday. - 'Reddit can be an excellent way to reach very specific groups of people if you know where to look and how to reach them and such as be extremely vital for marketing campaigns. (x) 'Madrigal, Alexis C. "AMA: How a Weird Internet Thing Became a Mainstream Delight." The Atlantic. - 'Information on Reddit's crowdsourced question-and-answer sessions (AMA format) and how it has impacted not only the reddit community, but also influenced other social media platforms, such as twitter. (x) Citations "About Reddit: How Reddit Works." Web log post. ''Reddit.com. Web. "Alien: Color Guide." Web log post. Reddit.com. Web. "Reddit 101: What Is Karma?" Reddit Help. N.p., n.d. Web. "Reddit 101: Redittiquette" Reddit Help. N.p., n.d. Web. "The TL;DR Guide to Reddit Lingo." Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. "Creating a More Curious Generation through Memes: Q&A with Reddit GM - Memeburn." Memeburn. N.p., 22 Aug. 2014. Web. Keywords * Internet * Social Media * Social Networking * Content Sharing * Media Culture